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RE: Birds can navigate by using the Earth’s magnetic field, and scientists have recently discovered a protein in the eye that is likely responsible for this ability
That's an interesting article. I am wondering, is magnetoreception the same reason, people used pigeons in old ages to send letters and stuff? Being at one location and remembring it for coming back makes sense. But sending the bird to an unknown location, how it works? And suppose there are multiple places where the pigeon had been, how people would tell the pigeon which place to go particularly?
Or is it all myth that pigeons were used as postman/postbird? 🤔
I don't have any personal experience with homing pigeons, but from what I understand, they cannot really be sent off to an unknown location. What you do is teach a homing pigeon where its home is, then transport it to another location. Now give it a letter, release it, and it will fly home. So if we're talking about postbirds in the medieval times, you would need one pigeon for each city you wanted to send a letter to.
Okay, that makes some sense.
What do you think about cats? Do they also navigate like pigeons do? Because cats never forget their home too, doesn't matter how many miles far they go.